


The Rational and the Divine

by whyamilike_this



Series: U-694verse [3]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: A Family Dinner Gone Astray, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, And is Her Father's Daughter, Beth Lives in Denial, What You Refuse to See Can't Hurt You
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:47:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21684736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyamilike_this/pseuds/whyamilike_this
Summary: People only see what they’re already looking for.Beth knew better than most that Dad’s opinions (and everyone else’s) were preordained and there was very little she could do to alter them.And it wasn’t like she had anything to hide; she just didn’t want Dad thinking that the coat of light blue paint she’d thrown up in the living room meant she cared. Or that the curtains she’d picked out and installed said she was putting down roots. Because she didn’t and she wasn’t. She was a different person now – different from the woman who lived in a house she hated with a man she didn’t love – and she could pick up and leave everything behind with no regrets at a moment’s notice. Just like he could.(Or the one where Beth's night with her father is met with too many interruptions.)
Relationships: Morticia (Pocket Mortys)/Rick Sanchez (Rick and Morty), Rick Sanchez/Morty Smith
Series: U-694verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1359898
Comments: 28
Kudos: 88





	The Rational and the Divine

People only see what they’re already looking for.

At least, that’s what Beth kept telling herself as she shuffled through a pile of datapads with one hand and cradled a glass of wine in the other. After a disgruntled huff, she glanced around her townhouse and decided she’d done enough cleaning to service her evening’s plans.

It wasn’t the disaster it had been half an hour ago; dishes spread out over the coffee table, books and tablets and scraps of paper littered all over the floor, takeout containers stacked next to the garbage. Nor was it clean enough that it looked like she’d made any extra effort. And the spread of all her reference materials sold the ‘ _I’m a genius doing Important Things’_ vibe that her dad had perfected in the old garage.

After all, she was _too busy_ to keep her house spotlessly clean – too absorbed in her work and her own thoughts to bother with minutiae like _dusting_.

Or that’s what she hoped he’d think; not the truth which was that she’d gotten sucked into the Cancri version of the bachelorette (where the failed contestants were _eaten_ by the bachelorette to feed her future offspring – why was that so cathartic?) and binged the entire season in her free time after work the last week, staying up and drinking too much wine and waking up every morning with a headache that alien medication could erase quicker than she could snap her fingers.

But Beth knew better than most that Dad’s opinions (and everyone else’s) were preordained and there was very little she could do to alter them.

As a doctor she saw it all the time. It wasn’t a fatty diet giving a patient heart disease, it was indigestion. It wasn’t toxic water rotting their tentacles, it was just a bad case of the space flu. Then there was Beth’s personal favorite: ‘this isn’t an STD, it’s a _rash_ ’.

They’d sit around at home, hoping things would get better on their own until they had a heart attack or their tentacle popped off or their genitals dissolved to mush and _then_ they’d think to go see a doctor. The universe was full of idiots incapable of seeing past their own prejudice and after a ten hour shift at the hospital, Beth was absolutely _sick_ of it.

She drained her glass and meandered back into the kitchen for a refill.

Not for the first time, she wished Dad was meeting up with her at the diner that was their usual go-to when they hung out. The food wasn’t great but the coffee they served was alcoholic to a human’s digestive system and catching up someplace neutral meant she wouldn’t need to clean or hyper-fixate on what Dad would make of the glimpse into her private life.

It wasn’t like she had anything to hide; she just didn’t want Dad thinking that the coat of light blue paint she’d thrown up in the living room meant she _cared_. Or that the curtains she’d picked out and installed said she was _putting down roots._ Because she didn’t and she wasn’t. She was a different person now – different from the woman who lived in a house she hated with a man she didn’t love – and she could pick up and leave everything behind with no regrets at a moment’s notice. Just like he could.

Speaking of which, she wondered what _his_ place looked like. She didn’t even know what planet it was on let alone if anyone ever dusted it or what color the walls were painted. That probably played a part in why she was so over-aware of his judgement. Whenever she asked about it, Dad always explained that he and Morty had to stay in hiding and that it was _safer_ for Beth if she didn’t know where to find them if anyone came asking.

He was so tight-lipped about it, Beth was starting to wonder if he was running a drug cartel off the rings of Gorbadron or smuggling contraband past the Perlaxian borders. It wouldn’t surprise her. He had a knack for attracting trouble.

Besides, with Rick Sanchez as her father, she’d long ago gotten used to never hearing the whole story. And if she pressed too hard, if she stopped being _fun_ and _agreeable_ and _easy-going_ , he might visit her less often. So she didn’t push the subject.

It didn’t matter anyways. He had a right to his privacy just like she did hers.

So, for whatever reason he never bothered to explain, instead of meeting at the diner like they did almost monthly, he had insisted he come check in on her flat, fix anything that might need fixing, and cook her a homemade meal. The free labor around the house made the not-cleaning slightly worth it and Beth had started a mental list of the things that could use a genius-inventor’s critical eye. The crack in the tub upstairs. The clogged sink. The washing machine. Having him over beat calling a repair man or figuring it out herself.

Plus Dad was a decent cook. The meals he made tasted like her childhood; like the few years where he’d been nothing but the best Dad on earth. When he let her sit on his knee while he tinkered with projects at the kitchen table and sang to her while he whipped them up pancakes. Beth wasn’t a big fan of nostalgia but the food at the diner was practically inedible so it was a worthwhile trade.

A confident knock at the door broke her out of her reverie and she smoothed her hair as she glanced at the clock. Early. That was a little uncharacteristic but she let the thought drop with a shrug. Trying to predict Dad’s behavior was like trying to nail down the weather. She hurried to the foyer, a smile already threatening to tighten her face.

Dad was grinning when she swung the door open and the warm light from the overhead lamp split the darkness on the front stoop, casting shadows across his face. And Beth was struck again, for the _millionth_ time, by the thought that she would never get over the surprise of his return, seemingly from the dead.

For _thirty years_ she was sure that she would never see her father’s face again. Normally being wrong was a bitter pill to swallow but apparently there were exceptions.

Watching those bright eyes flash and the crow’s feet around his eyes crinkle up with a smile made a familiar, heady rush of relieved anxiety zing briefly across the back of her brain but she shoved it down.

“Dad! Come on in!” Beth pushed the door open a little wider and the light from the foyer expanded across the stoop. It curved over the rest of her Dad’s remarkably unchanged features, dragged along his shoulder, and stretched onto the arm he had propped up along a young woman’s back.

Beth blinked.

_Morty_ , her brain belatedly corrected. That was _Morty_ standing there looking tight-eyed under Dad’s arm. When the hell had she become a ‘ _young woman_ ’ in Beth’s mind?

It took a little longer to put together than it should have thanks to the wine but Beth finally understood the change in their usual routine and the reason _Dad_ – of all people – was early: Morty had tagged along.

It was a few months since the last time Beth had seen her youngest daughter. It wasn’t as though she _hated_ when the girl interrupted her already so-limited time with Dad, but Morty had always been a strain on the relationship Beth worked so hard to develop with her father as an adult. And considering how rarely Morty joined them, Beth had assumed their wordless agreement to stay out of each other’s way worked just as well for her daughter as it did for her.

Sure, with Morty at his side, Dad would stay over a little longer. He was less likely to frown at his watch and rush off like he had something more important to do than shoot the shit with Beth (which he probably did, he was a genius after all).

But with Morty around he was easily distracted. They’d speak in shared references and inside jokes, nudging something cold and hard that had always lived in Beth’s stomach and felt _particularly_ bitter about the soft edges he had started to show.

Dad, on his own, was likely to drink more too. More inclined to revel in Beth’s stories about amputees and infectious diseases. And he more frequently reached his arm out and laid a hand on her shoulder in that way that meant Beth, for just a few minutes, was the very center of his attention.

Not that Beth _cared_. It was just something she had noticed.

But _Morty_ was the one cradled under his arm, her expression trying to twist into a grin but there was always something about her face that looked a little like a dog who expected to be kicked. Beth was sure her own welcoming smile didn’t touch her eyes but she was too tired from a long shift at the hospital to put much effort into it.

“Morty, you came too,” Beth tried, she _really_ tried not to sound bitter, but there must have been something there because Morty flinched, her fingers tightening in Dad’s lab coat. Half of Dad’s unibrow quirked up and his arm pulled Morty closer, a wordless statement of their solidarity. Beth momentarily felt a lifetime of anger and resentment boil under the surface of her skin but she quickly shoved it down.

“H - hey mom,” Morty stammered and Beth braced herself for a whole evening of that. Hadn’t they sent her to a voice coach once when she was a kid? Did she even _try_ not to stutter? Did she know how _unintelligent_ it made her sound? “I – you look good. I like your haircut.”

Beth blew air out her nose in a huff and just like that some of her annoyance melted away in a rush. She was being unfair. And it faintly surprised her that Morty had noticed she’d chopped off her hair at chin-length. Morty had never struck her as the observant type.

Beth gave her youngest daughter a quick once over, taking in the oversized flannel, the summery crop top and her high rise denim shorts. Morty looked fashionable and young. But not nearly as young as she had the last time she’d seen her. When had that been again?

“Yeah, you look great, sweetie. Re- _eeeugh-_ al professional,” Dad cut in and Beth silently thanked him for the interruption. Talking to Morty was hard sometimes. That didn’t make her _a bad mother,_ they just… didn’t have much in common. And as Morty got older, their differences became a bigger rift to cross.

“Thanks Dad,” Beth returned warmly, closing the door and smoothing a hand over her hair again. “Long hair is nothing but a nuisance in the ER.”

Dad hummed non-committaly, his hand on the back of Morty’s neck, buried underneath her long brown waves and Beth wondered whether it had been a mistake to cut her hair. Mom had always favored short hair and now that Beth’s most common outfit involved a doctor’s white lab coat over her jeans, she was surprised every time she looked in the mirror and found her mother looking back at her.

“I was thinking of growing it back out,” Beth decided in that instant and Dad shrugged.

The easy banter between her and her father wasn’t as quick to come as usual and it was easy to blame the extra set of wide brown eyes darting between the two of them. Beth jerked her attention to her daughter and Morty practically flinched, the shocked little jolt she did setting off a disproportionate amount of annoyance behind Beth’s ribs.

“I’ll just –” Morty reached down and grabbed the canvas bag Dad had been carrying, “I’ll start on dinner.”

Beth tried not to sigh in relief and only mostly succeeded. Morty must have remembered where the kitchen was from her last visit ( _was_ that just a couple months ago? Morty seemed a lot older than Beth remembered) because she bee-lined in the right direction and Beth breathed out a long exhale before turning to Dad with a smile.

“Still willing to take a look at a few things?” she asked and Dad flashed a put-upon grin that was half for show before he pulled out his flask and took a sip.

“Things at the hospital going good?” he asked as they climbed the stairs and crossed her bedroom to enter the master bath.

“Yeah. We just brought in the next batch of new recruits so I’m not the most inexperienced doctor on the ward anymore,” Beth laughed, lifting her wine glass and taking a deep sip. She finally felt like a _real_ doctor. Not a horse surgeon. Not a medical student. A real _actual_ inter-galactic doctor. She had _finally_ lived up to her full potential.

(She had hoped that when she finally accomplished that, she might be _happy_ , might finally stop drinking so much and sleeping so little and smile more often without feeling like she was grimacing. So far she hadn’t had any luck with that.)

Beth frowned briefly at herself in the mirror before she pointed out the crack in the tub and the clogged drain in the sink. She sank down onto the closed toilet seat and cradled her glass of wine, watching her father inspect the broken ceramic.

“That’s great, sweetie,” he hummed distractedly and Beth felt another spiral of resentment stab through her stomach. He could at least _pretend_ to be a little more interested in the answer to a question _he’d asked_.

The faint groan of pipes filtered through the walls and if Beth strained her ears, she could hear the sink running in the kitchen and the soft clatter of Morty doing the dishes. Morty almost always did the dishes when she came over and Beth wondered sometimes if it was a holdover from the chore list back on earth or if it was some sort of passive-aggressive jab at Beth’s homemaking skills. Whatever it was, Beth had to admit it was one Morty’s more useful quirks even if it still rubbed her the wrong way.

At the hum of noise from the kitchen, Dad tilted his head, his eyes going distant for a second while he focused on the sound with more of his attention than he was giving their stilted attempts at conversation. Beth frowned, watching his brow pinch as he recalibrated his internal layout of the house, clearly tracking Morty from room to room.

“She’s fine dad,” Beth snapped, the wine encouraging her hostile feelings. Dad swung his eyes over to Beth and there was an animal edge to the gleam in his eyes.

Distantly she knew she was treading on thin ice but she was too drunk and too tired to do anything besides roll her eyes. He didn’t _need_ to keep such tight tabs on Morty. She could handle the dishes just fine. Beth had never seen her father look after _anything_ the way he did Morty and she was clearly an adult now. Hell, when Beth was _a kid_ , she didn’t get that kind of careful concern.

For fuck’s sake he gave Beth a _switchblade_ when she was still in grade school and waved her off to run around the neighborhood with it in hand. And when she came home later that afternoon, face smeared with tears from the gash down the length of her thigh, his garage was empty, his newly built spaceship missing from the driveway.

Beth had sat on his stool for hours waiting for his return, thinking about how _sorry_ he’d be if he found her passed out in a pool of her own blood, clinging to the jacket he’d left behind. Unfortunately for that plan, her mother discovered her first.

Determined that _Dad_ was the one who had to fix her up, she’d fought like a hellcat but ultimately she got dragged off to the hospital, stitched up, and tucked into bed before Dad came back.

The next morning, she’d woken up to shouting out on the lawn. Dad was home again, and the anger she felt at his disappearances always vanished like magic upon his return. But mom was purple faced with rage as she laid into him, Beth’s own name springing up occasionally in the mix. Horrified but feeling oddly vindicated, Beth watched from the window as Dad’s smile fell into pale faced shock before lighting up with the more familiar twist of anger.

And Beth was _furious_ with her mother, her little adolescent chest combusting with the agony of a rage she couldn’t express. Didn’t mom _know_ better? Didn’t she realize that every time they had a screaming match loud enough for the neighbors to call the cops, Dad shot off into space for _days_ – sometimes even _weeks_?

Dad was always on edge back then. Perpetually one loud noise away from snapping at her about soldering safety. One snide comment about his drinking from walking out the front door.

In fact, it wasn’t too long after the incident with the switchblade and the hospital and the cops on the lawn that he left for good. And the brief warmth of victory Beth had felt watching her parents scream at each other about _her_ quickly collapsed into a deeply worn belief that if her mom hadn’t yelled at him, if she wasn’t always trying to _control_ him so much, maybe Dad would have stuck around longer.

Sometimes when she got _really_ drunk, she thought about flashing the scar that had stretched as she grew, just to see how Dad would react. If his sunken cheeks would pale like they did that morning. But the fear that he’d lash out at her again like he did so often back then kept her from doing anything more than playing out the fantasy in her head.

Though she had to admit, he had mellowed out a lot in the years he was off doing god-knows-what. Long gone were the days that he’d snap at her for looking at him wrong or touching his things or accidentally waking him up in the morning. Beth told herself it must be a side effect of aging - or that maybe whatever adventures he had found himself on while Beth grew from age nine to age _thirty-nine_ had tempered him into someone calmer and kinder than he used to be.

But watching the feral gleam in his eyes fade away, Beth forced herself to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that any change in him probably had more to do with her youngest daughter than the passing of time. Because, yeah, when he’d knocked on the door and walked back into Beth’s life, he had seemed like a different man, but that uncrossable distance that surrounded her father like a moat was the one true constant.

She had spent so long trying to picture their reunion that when it finally happened, she stood in shock for the first minute after opening the door, convinced she had slipped into a wine-fueled fantasy. But it really was _Dad_ standing there on the stoop, lips thinned out with stress and _older_ than she had ever been able to adequately imagine. That was what snapped her out of shock. Unfortunately that meant she burst out into tears.

He was quieter in his old age too, more restrained. She remembered her father being this bigger-than-life personality; always moving, always talking, using his arms to articulate his thoughts with wild abandon. But the man on the stoop simply stared at her with wide blue eyes that looked straight down to her worst thoughts about him and gently pulled her in for a loose hug.

When she was young he didn’t have the patience for hugging. Not often. And it was that hug that convinced her more than anything that he should stay, that she needed to know the person he had become, that maybe he wouldn’t _leave_ again if she let him in.

Now, sometimes Dad almost seemed _happy_ , and not in a ‘ _someone just got kicked in the balls_ ’ kind of way, but deeply and genuinely happy. Some of the prickly tension had drained from his shoulders, _especially_ when he was with Morty. And he’d get _that look_ with her sometimes; that soft look that she had never seen on his younger face - not with her, not with her mom, not with _anyone_.

Beth hid her frown behind her wine glass while she watched her father pick at the crack in the tub.

She just couldn’t imagine what made Morty so special. _Beth_ had never been able to reach him and she didn’t think there was anyone in the universe more like him than her. And after a lifetime chasing the swirl of his lab coat, the fact that it was her incompetent daughter that wound up getting all his kindness just _didn’t add up._

“So what, you couldn’t find a babysitter?” Beth asked and then immediately regretted the words. She couldn’t be like this, Dad _hated_ when she questioned his behavior, but the whole ‘ _abandoned as a child_ ’ thing was getting to her more that night than most, apparently.

Dad’s unibrow dipped ever so slightly into a V while he shook an aerosol can he’d pulled out of his pocket but his voice was light when he immediately changed the subject, “I like what you’ve done with the place.” He nodded out the open door to her bedroom.

She’d recently hung a painting over her bed: minimalist stripes of black over a white canvas. It was _absurdly_ expensive but she was a doctor now, a _real_ doctor, and she’d been a little tipsy at the gallery opening she’d gone to with a handful of her coworkers. They’d talked her into it, really. She didn’t even know if she liked the damn thing. But it was stupid to leave it sitting around when she had so many blank walls so she’d hung it over the bed.

Beth was still trying to decipher if her dad had meant it as some sort of backwards insult when he continued, “Looks like you’re finally settling in.”

“I’m not _settling in_ , Dad,” she bit out, rolling her eyes, tucking a leg up underneath her, and taking another sip of her wine. She _knew_ he was going to jump to that conclusion but he was only reading into things to fit the image he already had in his head. “I mean, I like the place sure. And it’s within walking distance of the hospital which is convenient. But I’m not _married_ to it.”

Dad cut her a skeptical look and Beth hid her face behind her wine glass as she took a sip. “Right,” he conceded flatly, spraying over the crack in the tub with the aerosol can, a thick stream of charcoal black foam spilling out. He fiddled a hand in his pocket briefly before pulling out a metal ruler that he used to swipe up the excess black foam, filling in the crack and leveling out the faintly glittering caulk.

She _tsk_ ed before she’d thought about consciously making the noise but it was instinctual. Her tub was white porcelain and the black foam made the thin crack even more noticeable than it had been before he’d patched it up. “You couldn’t have made it match?”

Dad quirked up half his unibrow, wiping the excess foam off on a rag and fishing around in his pocket again. “I’m not done yet.” When he pulled out what looked like a keychain flashlight, Beth raised one of her eyebrows right back at him.

The thing hummed when he turned it on, a vibrant purple light making the foam in the crack sizzle and bubble. And before her eyes, the crack disappeared, the patch flawlessly merging with the porcelain on either side of it, seemingly absorbing the color from the tub and shifting until it matched the exact shade of cream. “See?” Dad asked, sounding smug, clicking off the purple light and running his hand over the smooth surface.

“Yeah, yeah.” She wasn’t sure why she felt stupid all of a sudden. Maybe it was that she had underestimated her genius Dad. Maybe it was that she had briefly _cared_ about whether her tub had a big, hideous black stripe down the side of it. Maybe it was the way Dad was looking at her like he _knew_ she cared. Whatever the case, she rushed to change the subject. “So how are _you_ , Dad? How’s the universe?”

She tried not to sound too sarcastic but she only had part of his attention as he turned to the sink, taking a long sip from his flask while he twisted the tap and watched the basin fill.

“It’s go- _ooough_ -od,” he answered, eyes on the sink. “Spent some time on Centaurus A. Morty liked it at least – lots of white sand beaches and crystal mountains and shit. _Insane_ drug cartels too,” Beth internally smirked. She _knew_ her dad was messing around with drugs – she fucking called it. “But that’s what happens when your breathing air is a narcotic to 87% of the creatures in the universe.”

“I hope you wore an air mask,” Beth chided, swirling her glass and boring into her dad with serious eyes. Dad pulled out two corked test tubes from an inside pocket and took a sip of one before he dumped the remains of both into the sink where the liquid frothed and bubbled in the drain. “I’ve seen a lot of patients who thought they could handle the high and lost their minds to an overdose.”

Dad rolled his eyes and Beth tried to ignore how much she had just sounded like her own doctor mother, always comparing everything to her patients and doling out unsolicited advice. “I know how to handle myself,” he assured her and Beth bit down on the ‘yeah, you _think_ you do’ retort dancing at the tip of her tongue. With a casual twitch of his wrist, he turned the faucet again and this time the water didn’t pool in the basin but flowed easily down the drain. “Go- _ooough_ -od as new.”

The sound of something ceramic breaking downstairs dropped the easy smile off Dad’s face and he was out of the bathroom and halfway down the stairs by the time Beth lurched to her feet, a little unsteadily. The wine was really hitting her.

Beth had enough time to privately think Dad was overacting as she staggered down the stairs, gripping the handrail tight. Morty was clumsy but that was no real cause for _concern_. A broken glass wouldn’t kill her.

“Who the fuck are you and what are you doing here?” Dad growled from the kitchen and Beth’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch as she hurried through the living room. Trouble followed those two everywhere they went and this was hardly the first time their evening together was interrupted by someone trying to kill Dad but that usually didn’t happen in her _house_. Not since she’d moved off earth at least.

And she’d just picked up a kitchen table she liked; an antique she’d found shopping with a coworker. There’d be no replacing it if Dad broke it in a shootout.

As Beth eased around the doorway into the kitchen, she expected another alien with a gun or maybe some asshole in a ski mask with a katana or something ridiculous like that. But what she found instead was Ken, a physical therapist from the hospital and one of Beth’s coworkers. His shaking hands were up in the air as Dad and Morty held him at gunpoint, Dad in particular looking like he would be happy to splatter Ken’s brains all over the dishes Morty had just washed.

“Woah, Dad, calm down!” Beth rushed to say, carefully avoiding the space between Ken and the two weapons trained on his forehead. “It’s just Ken, okay, I know this guy.”

She did know the guy. He bought her dinner about twice a week, paid for her internet, and had sex with her semi-regularly. She’d even given him a spare key after the third time she slept through her alarm thanks to a hangover and missed a shift at work. She’d gotten kind of used to him letting himself in to shake her awake with a coffee in one hand and a painkiller in the other.

The rumpled shape of her coat was scrunched up next to his feet and it was easy to guess that he had used that as an excuse to stop by after work.

His eyes were dinner-plate wide as they darted between the old man still pointing a gun at his head and the young adult slowly lowering her weapon and tucking it into the back hem of her shorts underneath her oversized flannel.

(Did Morty always walk around with a gun tucked into her jeans? Beth ground that thought to a halt. She didn’t want to know the answer.)

“Does he normally let himself in the back door like a fucking creeper?” Dad spit out, and Beth hated the weird stripe of jealousy that licked up her spine when he cut his attention to Morty, raking over her with his eyes in a quick sweep, sizing her up for injuries or distress. Pieces of a broken plate crunched under her shoes but otherwise she looked unharmed, if a little harried.

“Yeah,” Beth answered flatly and she could tell she’d managed to surprise her father by the gratifying flick his eyes did in her direction.

“Morty?”

He said her name like it was a question but Beth didn’t catch the meaning until Morty answered, “H - he just startled me, Rick,” crouching to collect the shards of plate.

Rick lowered his weapon and some of the ruthless-killer-look drained away from his face. “ _Jeezus, Morty_ ,” he sighed, tucking his weapon into his pocket and running his hand over his face. Beth belatedly realized he’d been worried. _Really_ worried.

Was someone after them? Was that why Dad was on high alert? It wouldn’t be the first time. Summer had sent Beth a wanted poster with their faces on it a couple years ago and she still wasn’t over the shock of seeing ‘ _DEAD OR ALIVE_ ’ printed under their photos.

Dad stretched out a hand and ruffled Morty’s hair, affection dripping from the gesture and turning the wine in Beth’s stomach to vinegar. “You’ve really gotta work on your spatial awareness.”

“Sorry, Rick,” Morty hummed back automatically, her cheeks dusting pink.

“Uh – Beth?” Ken asked wide-eyed, his hands still up in the air, and the full attention of all three of them swiveled back to him.

“Ken, this is my dad,” Beth introduced, wishing Ken would lower his hands and stop looking so shell-shocked since Dad was staring at him with his unibrow half-raised in appraisal and something bordering humor, like he was trying to hold in a laugh. Ken made quite the picture: a floral Hawaiian shirt draped across his thin shoulders clashing horribly with his violet-hued skin, sandals on his feet even though the weather was too cool for that, and thick glasses magnifying his four eyes.

Beth had thought it before – the guy was kind of a _dork_ – but he was helpful and clearly smitten with her and a decent lay so she had overlooked it. Now, with Dad in the room, she realized how low she’d let her standards drop.

“Rick,” Dad interrupted her thought process, stepping forward and offering the hand that had not-so-long-ago been holding a gun. “And this is Morty.”

Morty, who was still on the ground picking up shards of plate, glanced up with something that almost looked like a smile. “Oh, uh, h - hi,” she stammered and Beth rolled her eyes.

Ken cut a glance at Beth but she kept her face carefully neutral and without her guidance, he stepped up to Dad and shook his outstretched hand. “Wow, _Rick_ , nice to meet you. Beth talks about you a lot.”

“I do not,” Beth snapped, telling herself it was the wine making her cheeks feel flushed. Beth frowned at the floor, unhappy that her previously very separate lives were colliding. “Dad, while you’re here I was hoping you’d take a look at the washing machine, too.” Beth watched Ken’s face fall at the obvious dismissal and he bent to collect her crumpled coat off the floor. “Ken, did you need something?”

“You left this at work,” he said, holding the jacket out to her and frowning when she snatched it a little roughly out of his hand. “Here, Morty, right? Let me help,” Ken politely offered, pinching his slacks at the knees and bending down. He gently cupped Morty’s hands, taking the broken pieces of ceramic from her with the ease of someone used to softly guiding others through simple motions. Morty jerked at the unexpected touch and the tiny, almost unnoticeable cringe felt like a hot poker stabbing into Beth’s conscience.

“M – ah -” Morty stammered at Ken until Dad reached down and looped his hand around her forearm, tugging her to her feet in one quick pull. “I’m sorry a - about the plate.” Morty turned big, liquid eyes up to Beth, looking more like an abused animal than ever before, bracing herself like she was expecting to be snapped at.

“It’s fine, Morty,” Beth sighed. She was one plate short of a set now but it was _fine._ Morty bit her lip before ducking her head.

Dad glanced at Beth briefly with something indiscernible furrowing his brow before he ran his hand over Morty’s hair in an absent caress, turning around to fish the dustpan out of the kitchen pantry and pointedly shoving it towards Ken. The alien took it looking sheepish.

“I’m sorry I gave you a scare.” Ken glanced between Beth and Morty and held up the dust pan. “Oh careful,” he hummed, reaching out for Morty’s arm again and encouraging her to drop the huge shard of plate she was squeezing with a light brush at the back of her hand. “Let me clean this up, it was my fault for startling you.”

Morty dropped the shard like it was hot and Dad angled her gently out of Ken’s reach. Beth stared blankly through the far wall and took a long sip of wine, some leaking from the corner of her mouth. The wrist she lifted to wipe it away was shaking but that was probably just because she hadn’t eaten much that day.

“ _Exactly_ my thinking,” Rick growled and Ken grimaced before turning back to the task at hand.

Ken was the kind of guy that was very good with patients but most of the staff couldn’t stand working with him. His endless rambling was tolerable if you only stopped in for a few hours a couple times a week as your brain finished connecting all the synapses that controlled whatever new appendage had been replaced. Physical therapy wasn’t an easy process and the low drone of Ken’s voice could be calming; the perfect low-level distraction from an excruciating process.

But it was easy for Beth to imagine that the same voice could get _grating_ after hour after hour, shift after shift.

It worked out for her because they didn’t spend much time in the hospital together. After work hours, the constant flow of his conversation was soothing compared to the thoughts that threatened to overwhelm Beth if she didn’t have a suitable distraction. And if _talking too much_ was the worst it got with Ken… well, Beth had spent longer with someone much worse.

None of Beth’s coworkers knew about her ‘relationship’ with Ken (though Beth struggled to even define it as such). Hyperion was huge – the hospital running on the backs of _thousands_ of doctors and nurses and specialists and staff – so it wasn’t often their paths crossed. It was pure chance they met at all when a ship full of Lardokian tourists crash landed in a strip mall and the subsequent inrush of patients needing surgeries shoved them unexpectedly together.

And it was better to keep her private life separate from her work life – easier to avoid the useless meetings with HR and the inevitable good-natured ribbing and the added level of awkwardness on the rare occasion they bumped into each other at work.

Unfortunately, her lack of confiding in her coworkers backfired unexpectedly earlier on in the week and the idea of cutting things off had started to sound more and more appealing. Something that would _also_ be made a lot easier by the fact that no one at the hospital knew about their shared intimacy.

Maybe if she’d mentioned him to the nurses months ago when they started sleeping together, someone would have filled her in on Ken’s brush with administration. Maybe if she had known about it, she wouldn’t have given him a key to her townhouse or let him spend the night in her bed. Maybe he would have been a quick, forgettable fling, not the nuisance currently shuffling around on his knees on her kitchen floor, interrupting her dinner with Dad.

She was only checking in with a patient she suspected might need another round of surgery, some niggling curiosity pressing her to visit while she knew the patient was working with Ken. It was easy for Beth to ignore Ken’s too-warm glances and shut down his playful attempts at banter as they compared notes but the nurses, apparently, had been watching them interact and noticed his obvious interest.

“Looks like he’s got his eyes on you,” one of them said, handing over the patient’s clipboard to Beth at the check in desk. Beth glanced over her shoulder to see Ken’s lovesick look of devotion quirk up into an easy smile. Despite herself, Beth felt a tiny, giddy rush.

Beth hummed non-commitally back, secretly a little pleased.

“Eh, you could do better, Doc,” a burly orange orderly said, leaning back and propping her feet up on the desk. “The guys got a reputation.”

“A reputation for _what_ ,” Beth asked, an uncomfortable pit opening up in her stomach.

“Sexual harassment,” the nurse leaned in to whisper conspiratorially.

“Not too long ago, a few patients said he made them feel _uncomfortable_ ,” the orderly chimed in and a cold breath huffed out of Beth’s mouth. “Young patients. Too young. They called him ‘ _flirty_ ’.”

“ _What_?”

“Nothing came of it, obviously,” the nurse continued, her lips pursing. “They couldn’t prove any wrong-doing so they transferred the patients to another physical therapist and swept it all under the rug.”

Beth glanced back to Ken, his big hands wrapped around a little girl’s waist as she adjusted to carrying her weight with the spine _Beth_ had repaired and replaced. He was gentle with her, a bright smile on his face as he urged the little Gazorpian on.

“If they couldn’t _prove_ it then why are we talking about it,” Beth bit out in her firmest authoritative-doctor voice, her heart hardening to ice. The nurse dropped her eyes back to the desk and the orderly raised her hands placatingly.

“Hey, no offense, Doc. Just… wanted to give you fair warning.”

Beth had stormed off determined to put the rumors out of her mind because that’s all that they were – _rumors._ It was obviously all some kind of misunderstanding. Ken wasn’t _like that_.

Sure, Ken was a touchy-feely kind of guy. _A lot_ of the physical therapists were. Working all day with people’s bodies, always being ready to catch someone if they stumbled or smooth someone through a jerky movement, it gave them boundary issues. It was one of the first thing she noticed about him. Who wanted friendly shoulder pats and elbow nudges after a brisk walk through the infectious ward?

And she’d known him for _months_. She would have noticed something, especially after… She had an _eye_ for that now. Fool Beth once…

So a _few allegations_ didn’t mean anything. Nothing was proven and the hospital was too prestigious to let a _sex offender_ keep their job.

No. _No._

Beth wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She was way too smart for that.

“Dad, the washing machine?” Beth bit out, pretending she hadn’t noticed how Dad had slotted his body between Morty and Ken, Dad’s cold eyes raking over Ken like he was reading his fucking history off his slouched over shoulders.

Dad took a long sip from his flask, pinning Ken with a searing glower. “Lead the way,” he conceded, ruffling Morty’s hair before following in Beth’s shadow as she stomped down the short hallway to the utility room.

Instead of inspecting the washing machine, Dad leaned against it and took another sip from his flask, a smirk tilting up the corner of his mouth. “S- _oooough-_ o, you’ve started dating again,” he said, less a question than an observation. Beth bit back a sigh and drained the last of the wine from her glass, deeply regretting that she hadn’t grabbed a refill while she’d been in the kitchen.

“We aren’t _dating_ ,” she insisted, crossing her arms and bouncing her empty glass against her elbow. “I don’t _date._ ”

“Woah, defensive much?” Dad snickered, finally turning to the washing machine and tugging it away from the wall. “What’s the problem with this thing, anyways?”

“It shimmies around when I do a load of jeans.”

She could have just gotten a new one. Hell, there were _way_ better ways to clean your clothes than an earth washing machine. But she had bought the damn thing with her first paycheck as a horse surgeon and Dad’s tinkering had kept it working well past its expiration date and sometimes it was nice to have a reminder of the life she used to live. A _small_ reminder. To keep her grateful.

But with a disbelieving glance, Dad stopped his pulling and turned to her with a twisted up look.

“You’re overloading it, sweetie,” he said, that familiar condescension so much more grating now that her intergalactic ID read ‘Elizabeth Smith _MD_ ’.

“I know how to do laundry, Dad,” she snapped back, but he was already pushing the machine back against the wall.

“Clearly you don’t if you’re stuffing it so full it’s walking around the room.”

“It’s walking around the room because it’s _broken_. How is that my fault?”

“Tell you what: go a little easier on the heavy stuff and give me a call if it’s still a problem.” He leaned against the machine again and took another pull from his flask. “But it won’t be a problem because it _isn’t broken_.”

Beth breathed out long and slow from her nose, willing herself not to snap. She had to stay cordial but she was _sick_ of being talked down to while _Morty_ got coddled. “Can’t you just check it out while you’re here?”

Dad took a long drag from his flask, his eyebrow flat and frustrated. Broken ceramic tittered from the kitchen, probably the dust pan being emptied into the garbage, and Dad’s eyes cut to the sound before he sighed and wedged himself into the small space behind the machine, crouching down out of sight.

He was still on edge. Knowing him it was probably from pulling out his gun without getting a chance to shoot at someone. And Beth was still actively trying to shove back the unreasonable stirrings of jealousy that Dad seemed more upset about leaving Morty alone in a room with Ken for _two fucking minutes_ than the fact that Beth was regularly sleeping with an alien he didn’t know.

_Protective_ wasn’t a word she would have ever used to describe her father before – certainly it didn’t describe the man he was when she was a child and he stole half the engine from Mom’s car and didn’t tell anyone until the thing set on fire with Beth and mom inside – but that was only more glaring proof that _Morty_ was _special._

Beth almost lifted her glass to her lips again from muscle memory alone until she remembered it was empty.

Beth knew all about it. Dad had filled her in; she still remembered that late spring afternoon before she’d gotten her intergalactic GED and moved on to applying to medical colleges across the universe. She remembered the way Dad had padded down the stairs, a serious look on his face, Summer at his heels looking curious and annoyed like she’d been dragged out of bed.

“Family meeting,” he growled, hooking an ankle around the leg of his usual chair and sinking into it, elbows on the table while he steepled his fingers.

“What about Morty,” Summer asked, hand on her hip, glancing towards the stairs like she was ready to run up them and find her sister.

“Don’t bother, this is about her.”

Beth thought the way Summer’s face immediately went pale and lax might not be too different from how Beth looked considering the uncomfortable lurch her stomach had just made for the door.

Was this about _Jerry_? Was Dad finally going to tell them what he did with him?

(Not that she wanted to know.)

Or was this going to be about Morty’s _feelings_ or something equally inane? Morty had been uncharacteristically quiet lately as she struggled to pick up her grades before the end of the school year. Dad and her had been going on less adventures, too.

But she couldn’t have _remembered_ , right? Dad promised – they’d hinged their whole response to… that situation… on the idea of keeping this terrible secret from crippling her underdeveloped brain.

“With how _interplanetary_ the two of you are getting to be, there’s some – _eerup_ \- there’s some shit I should probably tell you about,” Dad started, looking like he’d rather be drilling a hole through his own head. Beth leaned in, interested despite herself.

Dad coughed to clear his throat and took a long sip from his flask. “As you both know, I’m not the only Rick to have discovered interdimensional travel.”

“Right,” Beth affirmed, the memory of that woman, the one who was almost her dad but _a woman_ , still fresh in her mind. “We met that other you - the female you - that one time.”

“Ri- _eeeughi_ -ght. Well, there’s a lot more than just the one.”

Beth took a moment to process that. “How many more?”

“A _lot_ more. _Infinite_ more.”

Summer, her face scrunched up in thought, asked the next question on Beth’s mind. “Are there more us-es too?”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Y- _eeeugh_ -es.”

“Really?” Beth asked, a little intrigued. What were the other Beths like? Were they similarly saddled with children and a husband too soon or did they do a better job of convincing Jerry to pull out?

“Yes, there’s – there’s loads us, of _everyone_ – it’s a fucking _multiverse_. We exist with every variable you can imagine and about a trillion more besides.” There was a sharpness to Dad’s voice like he was already annoyed with them but he’d been on edge ever since he came back from his almost week-long trip to the moons of Jupiter and everyone had settled into the not-exactly-comfortable-but-age-old-tradition of not talking about it.

And okay, so maybe Beth had over-reacted a bit. When he slammed the ship down in the driveway and stumbled out looking groggy and banged up, dark shadows circling his eyes, she didn’t _mean_ to break out into tears, but she had a lot of wine in her and it was the first day of her period and _so what_ if she was a little emotional.

He told her he’d spent a few nights in prison - something he said probably wouldn’t have happened if Morty had gone with him instead of on her field trip - and he let her lean her weight into his chest while he wrapped loose arms around her waist.

Beth had been _sure_ he wasn’t coming back, the last words they’d exchanged a petty argument over _Morty_ of all fucking things. So things were still tentative but they were getting better. At least he hadn’t _left_ again.

“Ooookaaay,” Summer dragged out, irritation leaking into her voice and snapping Beth back into the conversation, “So what?”

After a heavy glare directed at Summer, Dad clenched his jaw like he was moderating the words about to come out of his mouth and Beth, who knew better than anyone how unlike him it was to tread carefully, leaned forward and frowned. “There’s a lot more me-s and a lot more Beths and a lot more Summers...”

“What about Morty?” Beth asked, noticing the very pointed exclusion.

Dad sighed. “There’s a lot of _Morties_ out there, too. They’re all over the place, usually running around with another me. And odds are good you’ll bump into another set sooner or later.” He snapped his mouth closed and worked his jaw like he was fighting an instinct to keep quiet. “But Morty -” he grit out from between his teeth, “- _our_ Morty, is a little rare.”

“Rare how?” Beth asked, struggling with disbelief. Unless it was for her profound lack of intelligence, it was impossible to imagine _Morty_ was _special._

“Almost all other Morties are male. _Mortimers_ instead of _Morticias._ ”

Oh. That wasn’t terribly exciting.

Summer seemed to agree, the worried, serious air immediately dropping as she perked up. “Cool. Are there any boy Summers?”

“You don’t – ye- _aaaugh-_ ah, Summer. A lot, actually.”

“Are there male Beths?” Beth hurried to ask, her mind running wild trying to imagine what her life would have been like if she’d been born a man. She wouldn’t have been able to get knocked up, for one. She’d probably already be a doctor. And if Dad had a son instead of a daughter…

“Yeah, there’s a lot of those too,” Dad waved the thought away like it didn’t matter even though Beth was _dying_ to know more. “But back to the point: Morty is something of a… a rare breed. _Very_ rare. Rare enough that if word of her spread, she would attract some… unwanted attention.”

Summer’s face had grown dark and serious again but Beth couldn’t help the disbelieving exclamation of, “From _who_?”

Dad tilted his flask to his lips again and took a long swallow. “From o- _ooough-_ ther Ricks.”

So it wasn’t that Morty was special to the _universe_. She was special to _Dad_. To _all_ of the Dads in every dimension. How fucking lucky for her. “Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘ _oh_ ’.”

Summer’s fingers drummed along the table, her eyes boring hard through the wood. “Okay…”

“So listen,” Dad continued, leaning forward and darting his pale blue eyes between Beth and Summer demandingly. “If you meet another Rick and Morty, don’t go running your mouth off about how _different_ yours is – it’ll attract the wo- _ooough-_ rst kind of attention and I really don’t want to deal with that sort of crap.”

He never mentioned it again and Morty functioned the same as always, seemingly unaware of the special attention she’d managed to attract from the most important man ( _men?_ ) in the universe. And Dad’s request to not talk about Morty slotted in so well with Beth’s determination to not _think_ about Morty that it wasn’t a problem at all.

No, it was much easier to take that order to the extreme.

And Beth _had_ seen another Rick and Morty – a pair of them came through the hospital once. She saw the other-Rick first and almost raised her hand to call out to him until she noticed the boy at his side. Hurriedly she ducked behind the nurse’s station where she could observe them through a thick one way mirror while they stood around the waiting room.

The boy-Morty was pale and cradling his side (laser blast, fairly recent, clean entry and exit, cauterized but likely impacted the spleen) while the other-Rick surveyed the room and sipped from a flask identical to Dad’s, a hand on the back of the boy’s neck in a bizarrely familiar stance.

It was a little eerie, seeing this alternate version of her father who looked so much like her own.

And looking at boy-Morty was even weirder.

Morty’s uncoordinated looks worked better for him, or at least _his_ stick straight figure wasn’t so depressing. And the idea that Dad would be more attached to a _grandson_ than his own daughter clicked into place like it was what her heart had needed since he’d walked through the front door and back into her life.

That their Morty was a girl was probably another strange burden for him to bear, maybe even another way Beth had disappointed him, but she had never seen another Beth out wandering the multiverse so maybe that was consistent through time and space.

Beth shook herself out of her reverie to swirl her empty glass. _God_ she needed a refill. And Dad was standing up and shimmying back out from behind the washing machine so it seemed like she’d get a chance.

Then the sound of conversation from the kitchen filtered dimly into the room.

“So, Morty,” Ken started, his loud voice clear a room away. “I’ve heard so many crazy things about Rick I don’t even know where to start.”

Morty laughed nervously in response.

There was a long pause, the kind Beth was intimately familiar with. He liked tacking on a silence after an open ended statement, leaving the other person to fill the gap with whatever they wanted. Personally Beth hated it, it reminded her too much of the few half-assed attempts at couple counseling in her past life.

From Morty’s extended dead air, she wasn’t going to fall for the trick either.

“How long have you and Rick been…” He trailed off with a questioning tone and Beth rolled her eyes.

After another lengthy pause Morty guessed, “Uhhh – adventuring together?” sounding very unsure of what Ken was trying to get at.

“‘ _Adventuring together_ ’,” Ken repeated back. “Oh, I like that. Yeah, Morty, how long have the two of you been ‘ _adventuring together_ ’?”

“Uhm, I guess… about five or six years now?” Morty answered but Beth had to strain to hear it. Dad seemed tuned into their discussion as well, his head tilted slightly in their direction while he leaned against the doorframe. “Yeah, it’ll be six years in a month or so. We’ve been at it – _jeez_ \- ever since the first night we met.”

Even a room away Beth could hear the smile in Morty’s voice and her eyes traitorously cut to Dad. He was listening too, his gaze boring through the floor, the tiniest hint of a grin quirking up the corner of his mouth.

“Six years, wow,” Ken hummed. “That’s quite a bit of time. Do you live together?” Beth scowled.

“Yeah,” Morty answered. “I mean – he moved in the day after I met him so…”

“The _day_ after you met? _Wow_.”

Beth scoffed. _Speaking_ of people seeing only what they wanted to see, Ken saw nothing but his own problems reflected back at him from every surface in the galaxy.

Living arrangements were a touchy subject with him. His place was off planet and he had bad credit from a brush with identity theft so it was a real shit-hole. They had spent the night there _twice_ before Beth swore off ever going back when she woke up to a Craftarian cockroach two inches from her face.

Ken brought up moving in with her monthly, usually around the time he had to write a check for rent. ‘ _We could just be roommates_ ’ he liked to promise. ‘ _You’d be saving half the money you spend on rent_ ’.

And Beth, who was still _very_ much enjoying living on her own after nineteen years with a full house ,was starting to get _real_ sick of it.

“W - what about you? Do you and – do you guys live together?”

“No, no we aren’t quite _there yet_ , you know? Beth values her privacy,” Ken recalibrated. “I hope to someday.” Dad turned to Beth, his unibrow climbing his forehead. “I mean, I have a spare key so that’s a step. I help out around the place every once in a while, try to make myself useful. Beth is pretty hapless when it comes to technology outside of the hospital. You know, I’ve seen her restart a man’s heart with nothing but a flurbon and a paperclip but she couldn’t figure out the cable box unless someone’s life depended on it.”

Morty laughed and Beth resented the both of them. She was _just fine_ on her own, thanks. _Better._ “That – yeah that sounds like her,” Morty quietly admitted and Beth huffed angrily before storming past her smirking father.

“Hey, how old are you anyways, Morty?” Ken asked, Beth stomping into the kitchen just in time to catch Ken jerk away from the counter in surprise. Beth tried not to notice how close he’d been standing to Morty, the same way he stood a little too close to the nurses at the reception desk whenever Beth caught a glimpse of him between patients, but Morty’s bunched up shoulders felt impossible to ignore.

Ken cut a furtive look towards Beth, a weird sheepish smile on his face. “There she is,” Ken sing-songed, opening his arms like she might step into them. And she didn’t _mean_ to, she was starting to feel like everything with Ken was a huge mistake, but the wine was catching up with her and Ken’s reassuring hand caught her by the forearm when she overbalanced.

“Dinner’s uh - just about ready,” Morty spoke to the stove. “I didn’t know where to find bowls…”

“Oh, I’ll set the table!” Ken offered jovially, and before Beth had a chance to ask him to leave, he was pulling down four bowls and setting them out on her small, round table.

“Staying for dinner, huh Ken?” Dad asked, a touch of something dark coloring his voice while he shot a look at Beth like he could read her mind.

Ken froze like he hadn’t considered the idea that he might be intruding, which he _very much_ was. “Oh, I – um yeah, if you’ll have me?” His voice tilted up at the end and Beth felt her chest constrict with annoyance.

And Beth, feeling like she was barreling towards the ultimatum she’d been avoiding all week, couldn’t muster the energy to give a single fuck.

“Sssssshure, why not?” Beth slurred and then mentally calculated how much wine she’d had that evening. The first bottle helped her work up the resolve to clean. And then she’d gone through most of another one _while_ she cleaned. And she hadn’t had much to eat, working through her lunchbreak when three Krootabulans were rushed through in pretty bad shape after a hunt gone wrong.

Whatever the case, she distinctly felt like she wasn’t drunk enough to stomach the rest of the evening with her Dad and Ken and Morty occupying the same room so she swayed over to the counter and snatched up the almost empty bottle she’d left there earlier.

Morty carried a pot of chili over to the table and Beth didn’t recognize the crockery as her own so they must have pre-cooked dinner and brought it over to reheat. Her drunk mind turned that over like a puzzle box. On the one hand, she liked Dad’s chili and it took hours to prepare. On the other, it indicated a certain rush to get through with the evening. Beth struggled not to roll her eyes.

“Smells great, Morty,” Ken said while Beth collapsed into a chair.

“It’s Rick’s recipe,” Morty diverted, a slight blush coloring her cheeks.

“You’re the one who thought to add peppers from Kepler 10c.” Dad smiled at her, something warm and genuine that he never turned on Beth, and everything about it made the big empty pit in Beth’s stomach ache. “And they re- _eeeeugh-_ ally make a difference.” 

In a move so smooth is reeked of domesticity, Dad slid a hand towel onto the table and Morty laid the hot pot down on top of it, pulling off her oven mitts and smiling at Rick in silent thanks. She tossed them onto the counter, seating herself in the chair Dad had absently pulled out for her and scooted herself a little closer to his side.

Beth frowned, her eyes darting to the table where she realized a plate of corn muffins had already been set out. She grabbed one and bit into it, mechanically chewing and swallowing, determined to weigh down the jealous boiling in her guts with some solid food.

“So,” Ken started and Beth silently seethed at the use of his networking-voice, the one he used at hospital parties and fund raisers, the one so fake it always chased Beth off to spend her time at the open bar. “What do you guys _do_?”

“‘ _Do_ ’?” Dad repeated and she could practically see his hackles rise at the shmoozy tone, the same way Beth felt her own stand on end. Morty turned and cast Dad a pointed look; a ‘ _don’t do this_ ’ look, and Dad visibly reigned himself in. “We ‘ _do_ ’ whatever the fuck we want.”

Ken looked briefly taken aback but he silently realigned himself to the unexpected hostility, his smile stretching. He cut a quick look at Beth and she just _knew_ he was thinking about their first few interactions, the ones where Beth vehemently rebuffed every attempt at banter he’d thrown her way. Ken could be _persistent_. “Right. But I mean, you gotta eat, right? Beth tells me you’re a scientist of some sort…?”

Morty’s hand landed on Dad’s forearm before he could open his mouth and she hurried to explain, “We don’t really have _jobs_ or anything like that. We – uh – we travel around a lot, look for people who need help or – or go out looking for valuable stuff and – uh – yeah. We make ends meet.”

Dad’s shoulders unbunched and he leveled Morty with a look that stole the breath right out of Beth’s lungs. It wasn’t until a moment later when her brain helpfully tagged the word ‘ _adoring_ ’ onto the expression that she understood why.

She had never seen Dad look so… open… before. Never. Not once in her entire life.

Vaguely in shock, Beth watched Morty smile quietly into her bowl, Dad’s face slotting back into his usual scowl while he spooned a mouthful of chili to his lips. If she had blinked she would have missed it because a moment later everything was normal again and Beth wondered whether it had all been some sort of wine-induced hallucination but her pounding heart promised her otherwise.

And that horrible taunt that always echoed in the back of her brain surged to the forefront and screamed ‘ _Why Morty?! Why Morty?! Why Morty and not me?!_ ’ so loud Beth couldn’t tune it out as well as she usually could.

“They run around the galaxy and solve crime or some shit,” Beth interceded, talking over the noxious thoughts that were too loud in the silence of her head. Morty’s big brown eyes flashed to her briefly before immediately dropping to the table and Beth felt the tiniest flare of shame. Then she swallowed it with a mouthful of wine and continued on, “They don’t like to talk about it. Real secret stuff.”

Dad quirked half his unibrow at her but she retaliated with the same look, or at least tried to. The kitchen was starting to spin a bit. Maybe she should eat something. She picked up her spoon and scooped up some chili but half of it slid off and landed on the table.

Ken cut her an anxious glance and wiped up her spill with his napkin. “Sounds fun,” he said, his voice falsely airy. “What neck of the universe do you live in?”

Beth started laughing. “That’s another _secret_.”

Distantly she knew she was veering away from fun-drunk and into _bitter_ -drunk but it was oddly validating to watch both Dad and Morty’s eyes snap up to her. Morty’s brow was furrowed as she shifted on her seat, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth to worry between her teeth. But Dad’s look was flat and unimpressed, that penetrating gaze boring into her, searching out her thoughts.

Without tearing his gaze away from Beth, Dad bit out, “What, is this twenty _fucking_ questions -”

“We move around a lot,” Morty rushed to talk over him, always _such a little mediator_. Beth tried to ignore the way Dad’s fist tightened and then unclenched when Morty stroked her fingers over his sleeve. “Adventuring takes us all over the place and we don’t stay anywhere too long.” After a drawn-out sigh, Dad deflated and scooted close enough to drape his arm over the back of Morty’s chair. Morty visibly relaxed against the contact and mustered up a shy smile for Ken. “What – what about you? What brought you to Hyperion?”

That was all Ken ever needed to dive into a long winded explanation of the series of calamities that made up his life. The accident that had taken his leg, his first exposure to the medical field and the tech who replaced his appendage with a cloned copy and re-taught him how to use his newly grown muscles.

Beth tuned it out, having heard it half a dozen times before and never _really_ having the desire to give it her full attention. Everyone working in the hospital had a sob story but that didn’t mean _Beth_ went around telling anyone who would listen about her brilliant doctor mother and the tumor that destroyed her brain.

(The tumor that would have been easily treatable - even twenty years ago - if Dad had stopped in and offered to take her to an alien hospital.)

But Dad never checked in and mom’s condition worsened too rapidly for Beth to process through all the residual anger leftover from childhood and then she was standing in front of her mother’s casket holding a one-year-old Summer and thinking she must have blinked and missed the moment to say goodbye.

Instead of dwelling on all that, she focused on the spoon and her bowl of chili, determined to not seem as inebriated as she was with Ken and Morty at the table. She hadn’t drank _that_ much wine; the problem was she hadn’t eaten anything for lunch. She’d be fine with another corn-muffin to absorb the contents of her stomach. She’d just wait a few minutes to refill her glass.

Beth chewed mechanically and watched the way Ken targeted Morty as the most avid listener to his story, probably because she was the only one at the table willing to make eye-contact with him still. Dad had pulled out his phone and was absently scrolling through it and yet again, Beth breathed out an annoyed sigh that her evening with Dad had been so thoroughly interrupted.

Everything was going wrong. They were _supposed_ to meet up at the diner and get drunk and eat shitty alien food and laugh about the bowel eating slug she’d pulled out of some guy’s ass this morning. Dad would pay for the drinks and Beth would watch people’s heads turn when he walked by – some strange instinct of attraction or intimidation – and she’d walk proudly at his side, feeling _important_ for being so close to the most brilliant man in the universe.

But Morty slotted into that position so much better than Beth ever had and sitting at her stupid antique table and eating her daughter’s stupid homemade chili, and watching the _stupid_ coworker she slept with slant half-lidded eyes at Morty, Beth felt like she may as well vanish for all anyone cared about her.

When she was a teenager, she had no idea things would turn out _like this._

Summer was one story. On a scale where 0 was a drunken night in the back of a borrowed station wagon and 10 was in vitro fertilization, Summer was somewhere around a 5. Neither nor. Not exactly an accident, but not entirely on purpose.

Because at seventeen, mom was struggling through her second round of chemo and things weren’t looking up. Dad was still MIA and odds were good he’d wouldn’t be making any miraculous reappearances. And Beth was staring down the barrel of a _very_ solitary future.

So it wasn’t like she had _meant_ to get knocked up with Summer, but Jerry’s clinginess was a relief from the crippling loneliness of her own house and with her mother literally wasting away, thoughts of mortality kept circling her head like vultures. Having a kid seemed like the easy way to give her life some meaning. And yeah, she was a little drunk when she agreed to let Jerry slide into home base without a condom but his parents were always excited to see her and he had a decent car and he was in _band_ for fuck’s sake so he was supposed to be smart, even if he seemed like an idiot.

And Summer was a decent kid. Smart and self-sufficient. Beth hadn’t heard from her in a while but a _capable_ young woman needed her independence, needed a chance to stretch her wings and take on the universe alone. Maybe their orbits would cross again when she got the wanderlust out of her system but Beth wasn’t exactly holding her breath and waiting for a phone call.

Which was the exact opposite of Morty who seemed willing to cling to Dad for the rest of his life. But maybe that was because Morty wasn’t just an accident; she was cosmic punishment.

By the time Morty was dividing cells in Beth’s uterus, mom was dead and Beth had learned the hard way that you could only glean so many parenting skills from books. She had no idea what she was doing with Summer more than half the time and she kept bumping into her old classmates around town during holiday breaks. They’d all gone off to college while Beth hardly slept and seemingly lived just to attend to Summer’s various excretions. Jerry had turned out to be the _worst_ kind of idiot; neither particularly useful around the house nor likely to make a lot of money in his career and most of the time even his friendly attempts at companionship annoyed her.

In fact, less than a month after the quick and unsatisfying sex that produced Morty, they split up. Jerry would probably tell the story differently but _Beth_ was the one who kicked him and Summer out of the apartment they’d been living in at the time. She couldn’t exactly remember it; it was around the one year anniversary of Mom’s death and her newly acquired (and somewhat fraudulently certified) job as a veterinary technician was on the rocks so she’d been drinking a little more than usual, but she had some foggy memories of screaming ‘ _get out_ ’ at Jerry while he tearfully carried Summer and a diaper bag out the door.

With Summer and Jerry gone, Beth _finally_ got a chance to be a normal twenty-year-old woman. She went to parties and experimented with drugs and nearly lost both her job and the apartment, but her dad had done shit like that all the time and he was a _genius_ so what did it fucking matter? What did _anything_ matter?

Because of the partying and the diet change and probably a minor dose of denial, it took _months_ for Beth to realize she was pregnant again.

Beth’s stomach had barely grown and for ages she figured the slight pudge was a beer belly. Morning sickness was indistinguishable from a hangover. The strange cravings she attributed to the munchies. And her period had never been particularly consistent, especially when the never-ending party her life had become completely erased her concept of time.

It wasn’t until she knocked a box of tampons out of the cabinet in a mad dash to puke in the toilet that she pieced it all together, stumbled to the pharmacy and picked up a pack of three pregnancy tests.

They all came up positive.

Summer had dodged an abortion because the car broke down on the way to the clinic but Morty was too far along by the time she’d been discovered so there was no way out.

For one awful day, Beth paced the house and finished the bottle of vodka she’d started _before_ she realized she was pregnant and silently pleaded the excessive drinking would lead to a miscarriage but if that hadn’t happened yet, it wasn’t likely to happen at all.

The next day, she sobered up. She called Jerry. She called her doctor. And she told herself she’d try hard to be a better parent than her Dad had been.

Looking at Morty now, Beth had to admit she probably hadn’t succeeded. Morty _looked_ like an adult – a _young_ adult – but the way she still occasionally gripped Dad’s sleeve and trailed around in his wake like a duckling probably meant she hadn’t adjusted the way she was supposed to.

Beth whole-heartedly blamed Jerry for that. _Obviously_. After shit like that, there wasn’t anything _Beth_ could have done to stop Morty from turning out broken. You can’t glue together a shattered glass and expect it to hold water.

And _so what_ if Dad’s free hand circled the back of Morty’s neck the entire meal. Beth was a successful adult. _She_ didn’t need his endless reassurances. Morty demanded that sort of attention because she was weak and stupid and _traumatized_ or whatever. The lack of that physical affection towards Beth was Dad’s way of showing that he _respected_ her, that he acknowledged she didn’t need a supporting hand, and Dad had always valued independence above all else. 

Beth pulled herself out of her thoughts to realize she was looking down into an empty bowl. “ _Beth_?” Ken asked loudly in a tone of voice that suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d said her name. “Can I take that?”

Ken gestured to her bowl and she nodded, realizing belatedly that the seat her father had previously been occupying was empty. Something thick and heavy lurched in her stomach and it was a familiar feelings. It had been there forever because even before Beth had developed the ability to form memories, she’d known _intrinsically_ that Daddy sometimes went away and maybe someday he’d never come back.

But Dad was seated in the armchair nearest the door, his phone still in hand. The pipes ran as the downstairs toilet flushed and Morty came into view, wiping her hands on her flannel shirt. With an ease that made Beth want to _scream_ , Morty leaned over the back of the chair and rested her chin on Dad’s shoulder like she was entitled to his personal space. Morty said something too low and quiet for Beth to hear but Dad erupted into laughter, his face transforming into something younger and kinder.

Beth felt a wave of jealousy so sticky-tar black that she nearly choked on it. It clung to her like threads, jerking her out of her seat with marionette strings, forcing her to stagger into the living room.

“Morty, why don’t you help Ken clean up your mess,” Beth heard herself say and the small upturn to both their mouths vanished in an instant.

“O – okay –” Morty stammered, standing up straight and hurrying out of the room as Beth collapsed onto the sofa opposite Dad.

Even with her eyes closed, she could feel Dad’s eyes on her. “I think your bo- _ooough-_ yfriend can handle himself.” Beth resented the chilly tone and felt her own agitation rise to meet his.

“It’s not like that. We’re in a mutually beneficial, _completely casual_ relationship based - based more on our desire for physical release than any emotional involvement.”

“Shit, just call it what it is, sweetie,” Dad scoffed and Beth slanted her eyes open to glare at him. “And I don’t know a lot of _fuck-buddies_ with keys to each other’s townhouses.”

“Leave it alone, dad.”

“Whatever you say.”

The room was spinning and Beth yet again closed her eyes against the ceiling that wouldn’t stay still. She knew objectively that what she _should_ do is climb up the stairs and pass out with the bathroom garbage can next to the bed but she couldn’t burn that soft look on Dad’s laughing face from the back of her closed eyelids.

“She’s not a _kid_ anymore, you know.”

Dad didn’t respond but she heard the _swish_ of fabric against fabric as he shifted in his seat. Ken and Morty were talking again in the kitchen, their voices drowned out by the running sink and Beth’s drunken disorientation.

“She’s old enough now to be out on her own, to take care of herself. I was doing it at her age –” she very purposely swallowed the ‘ _thanks for that_ ’ that tried to burble out of her mouth. “- Summer was too. You don’t have to –” Beth’s face twisted into a scowl. “It’s _weird_ that you _spoil_ her so much.”

Beth waited, hoping Dad would snap something caustic back so they could fight about it, a million things just _dangling_ from the tip of her tongue and waiting to be aired out, but it seemed it wasn’t only Ken who knew how to leave a leading silence.

Time stretched on, the only noise the running water and murmured conversation from the kitchen.

Eventually Beth gave in. “She should have a _boyfriend_. Or a girlfriend. _Somebody_ besides you. Can’t you see how – _ugh_ \- how _codependent_ you two are?”

And she remembered it just fine, what Dad had told her late one night when he was _wasted_ and she was getting there herself but still had enough of her brain cells left to store new memories. 

Beth was frustrated, as she often was after Jerry was gone and Dad only had room for Morty on his adventures. A part of her had thought that letting him… do whatever he’d done with Jerry… would work off some of Dad’s excess aggression and start closing the unexpected wound he wore for what happened to Morty but she only clung to his coat tails tighter. They were _always_ together; always sitting on the couch or disappearing through a portal or next to each other at the dinner table, his arm slung over her shoulder.

But fine. Just like Dad said, Morty was ‘ _coping_ ’ or whatever and Dad probably was too, though he would never _ever_ admit it. Weeks passed. And then months. And still, they were inseparable, more than ever before, and so in tuned to each other a fog always hovered around them like they were in on some big secret.

And it wasn’t like she felt _left out_ or something equally inane. She just didn’t get it. It stung like a hangnail in soapy water. If she wasn’t drunk enough to pass out, a sick sort of jealousy would keep her awake long into the night until she gave into her impulses and padded downstairs for a glass and a bottle of wine.

Eventually, the thought circling her head grew so loud that she had to know, had to _understand_ , because she couldn’t make sense of why her dad could spend so much time with Morty when _he left Beth_. So she hung back sipping her wine while he plowed through most of a bottle of whiskey until he was drunk enough for her to ask, “Why Morty, Dad? I’m her mother and even I know she’s not the brightest kid around.”

Rick cut her a cold, calculative look and for a second her heart stopped. Maybe he _wasn’t_ as drunk as she’d thought. Somehow even with only his eyes silently raking over her, he had never seemed more like the smartest man in the universe than he did in that moment and it made him a stranger. But when he lifted up the bottle of wine to top her off, red liquid sloshed over the side and onto the counter and the spell was broken. Beth breathed out a sigh of relief.

“She blo- _ooough-_ cks my brainwaves, sweetie,” he rasped, setting the wine down a little hard and snatching up his bottle of whiskey while cold blue eyes bore into her.

His response surprised her so much she blurted, “ _What_?” even though she usually liked to at least pretend she knew what he was going on about. He reached over a long arm and snatched up a loose receipt, flipping it over and pulling a pen out of his pocket.

“I - Beth - _a lot_ of people are looking for me and my brainwaves tend to stand out.” He drew a squiggly line like a wavelength in demonstration. “But Morty - see _Mo-_ oough- _rty’s_ brainwaves are perfectly synced to balance mine out.” He drew another careful line, one that was a perfect mirror of the first, crossing his only at the middle point.

Beth swallowed heavily and tried not to think stupid bullshit like ‘ _made for each other_ ’ or ‘ _soulmates_ ’ or ‘ _perfectly compatible_ ’ and mostly succeeded. She didn’t believe in garbage like that anyways. She cleared her throat and asked “And how does that work?” in as flat a voice as she could manage.

“She doesn’t even do a thing, sweetie, that’s –” he broke off into a chuckle, “- that’s the beauty of it. She just stands next to me and her – it’s _exactly_ because she’s – uh - _Morty_ -” he stressed, like he didn’t want to say ‘ _an idiot_ ’ but Beth easily supplied it in her own head, “- that her – her _Morty_ waves dampen my genius waves.”

A noise somewhere between a huff and a laugh slipped out of Beth’s mouth and before she thought to control it, she was laughing.

So it wasn’t an accident that poor, stupid Morty was the one who got to run around the universe with Dad. More importantly, it wasn’t that _Beth_ would have been a bad partner; she was simply overqualified for the job.

But thinking about that conversation now, Beth started to feel like Dad had given her the run-around. Not that she doubted for a minute the science behind his explanation; Dad didn’t fuck around with stuff like that. It was more that she was starting to think it was a convenient excuse – an explanation that took his own obvious feelings out of the mix.

It was a way for him to pretend he didn’t feel _guilty_ about what happened to Morty, a way he could keep her close and keep an eye on her and keep something like that from happening again. Which, begrudgingly, Beth could understand, even if she still felt disappointed that her Dad could be so _human_.

Ken took that moment to pop his head out into the doorway. “Beth? I’m borrowing this apron I found.” He was holding up a frilly apron one of the nurses had bought her as a joke after she told the ward she’d accidentally started a fire in her kitchen. (She had made it out like it was a funny mishap, a comedy of errors, not her drunkenly passing out in the middle of reheating carry out and waking up to a fire that nearly burned down the whole kitchen.)

The apron clashed even more horribly with his purple skin and Hawaiian shirt.

“You sure have a type,” Dad’s deep scratchy voice cut into her thoughts and she turned in time to catch him watching Ken’s retreat with reptile eyes.

“Wha the fuck doezat mean, Dad?” Shit, she was slurring worse than ever. Not that Dad cared. He was just as much of a lush as she was ‘ _thanks for that one too, dad_ ’. But the glance he cut her was hard like steel and she suddenly wished she wasn’t getting double vision if only to spare herself the heat of an extra glare.

“I’m saying _Ken is a piece of shit_ , Beth,” he bit out and she was so loosened up with wine it was easy to keep herself from flinching. “You really got yourself an upgrade. Were you _trying_ to find Jerry 2.0” And oh god there was that undertone, that accusatory bite, the one that reminded her why see left Earth, why she never called her daughters, why she _hated_ when one showed up on her fucking doorstep without a word of notice. “Listen to him.”

Against her better judgement, she obeyed.

“All that long hair was hiding your pretty face, Morty,” Ken’s voice cut over the sound of the running faucet as soon as she let herself listen in. He was being sweet, talking down to Morty like you would a kid even though she _wasn’t_ a kid anymore. She _wasn’t_. She was old enough now to take care of herself. “You ever think of cutting it? I bet you’d be even prettier.”

“Ah, I’m – I’m good, thanks…” Morty stammered, and the wine turned to vinegar in Beth’s stomach.

“He’s not like that,” she hissed, scowling at Dad, and she hated the pleading edge to her own words, the way they tilted up at the end like she was asking a question.

He leaned forward and his eyes were bright and punishing. “That’s what you said about _Jerry_ and look how that turned out.”

That’s what it _always_ boiled back down to with Dad. She hadn’t pulled the trigger on Jerry fast enough and now Dad thought she was _weak_. She hadn’t listened to his warnings and now he thought she was _stupid_. She made one single mistake and now he just _couldn’t wait_ for her to make another one.

And of course it was his precious _Morty_ getting hurt in the mix.

Somehow - even though an explosion thirty years ago from the garage had buried her and mom alive for _hours_ only for Dad to dig them out, obviously wasted and completely unconcerned - somehow _Morty_ was where he drew the line. Somehow _Morty_ wasn’t as expendable as every other fucking thing in the multiverse. Why why _why_?

“Maybe we should let the two of them catch up,” Ken continued from the kitchen and Beth wished his voice didn’t carry so much. “I know a good bar not too far from here. Beth can hang out with her dad while you and me get to know each other…”

“The guy’s _useless_ Beth,” Dad insisted, and Beth scrubbed her fists into her eye sockets realizing too late she was smearing her make-up. “Is he – is he seriously coming onto your _daughter_ in your own fucking house?”

“Uh – Rick?” Beth jerked at the sound of Morty’s voice. She was standing in the doorway looking flushed and uncomfortable, Ken loitering behind her with a smile that looked too sincere to stomach. His hand was on Morty’s shoulder and the girl looked distinctly uncomfortable with its presence, her neck tilted away from it as she bit her lip.

At some point Morty had taken off her oversized flannel, tied it around her waist, and wound her hair up in a sloppy bun. The unobstructed view of her thin shoulders bare beneath spaghetti straps and a too-large hand cradling the knobby bump of her humerus bone reminded Beth vividly of that afternoon not so long ago in the house on Earth, Morty naked and limp and small. She hadn’t grown much since then, she was still short and thin and too wiry, and with the blur of being drunk, it was easy to see her as that teenager lying broken across Beth’s ruined bedspread.

Beth swallowed down bile.

“E - everything’s all cleaned up,” Morty stammered, and it was hard to tell across the spinning room but Beth was pretty sure the girl was cutting semi-desperate ‘ _save me_ ’ looks to Dad.

“Alright sweetie,” he ground out, rising to rescue Morty ( _of course_ ) and pinning Beth with his pointed stare. “We’ll let you and what’s-his-face go back to playing house.”

Beth thought about pointing out that they’d barely been there more than an hour and a half, but it was hard to keep her eyes open when the floor kept trying to tilt away from her.

She held out her hand to him and Dad pulled her to her feet, tugging her into a one-armed squeeze that was over before it even began. Morty approached, her brow furrowed like she wasn’t sure whether she should move in for a hug too, but Beth overbalanced and landed back on the couch and Morty quickly glued herself to Dad’s side, his arm draping back over her shoulders and guiding her to the door.

“Bye,” Morty said, her voice faint, but Beth had already closed her eyes to block out the spinning room and the whirlwind of thoughts she’d been avoiding for too long.

Ken was quick to answer for her, “It was nice meeting you, Rick. Hope we see each other soon, Morty.”

“Do- _ooough_ -ubt it,” Dad burped and Beth let herself sink a little deeper into the couch cushion.

“Pardon?”

“Uh – yeah, bye,” Morty stammered.

Beth barely registered the soft sound of the door closing. Then Ken’s arm was squeezing between her back and the sofa cushion and he was leveraging her to her feet. “Come on, time for bed,” he soothed and she kept her eyes closed as he guided her up the stairs, the spinning too overwhelming to watch.

She didn’t _need_ Ken to put her to bed. She didn’t even really want him to. It might be _kind of_ nice to have someone around to take care of her when she was like this. Someone to walk her into the bathroom so she could empty her very full bladder and meet her at the threshold when she opened the door, guiding her to the bed and doing most of the work undressing her. He even tucked her in, fluffed her pillow and pulled the covers up to her chin.

“Your dad sure is a character, huh?” Ken chuckled under his breath, pacing away for a minute to bring her the empty garbage can from the bathroom.

“What?” Beth asked, eyes closed. Figured _Ken_ would sum up the most brilliant man in the galaxy with such a simple word.

“He’s got a strong personality.” Beth heard him settle the garbage on the floor next to her head and her stomach rolled when the mattress dipped, Ken sitting on the edge of the bed by her hip. “But I guess he would have to be pretty tough - what happened to his limbs?”

Beth frowned without opening her eyes. “What?”

“Cybernetics.” Beth squinted a glare at Ken who looked so completely sure of himself that she didn’t doubt his assessment. He might be an idiot with a lot of things but he was good at his job. “Nice ones too. I only noticed when he was pointing a gun at me – micro-movement, you know, the kind of precision impossible with organic material - otherwise they’re practically indistinguishable. No stiffness or jerky-movements during dinner. Where’d he get ‘em? That sort of tech – I know a lot of patients who could use something like that.”

“He –” Beth started and trailed off, _shocked_ that something so huge as _losing all his limbs_ had happened to her father and he’d never made mention of it. She was a _doctor_ for fuck’s sake – that was exactly the kind of thing that fell into her wheelhouse.

Ken sat silently, digesting her baffled expression like he was trying to pry her apart, and she carefully schooled her features back to neutral. “He probably made them himself. He’s an inventor. And a genius.”

“Hmmm,” Ken hummed noncommittally. “Maybe I’ll ask him about them next time.” Beth scoffed. There wasn’t going to be a _next time._ Once was more than enough. “And he really likes ‘em young, huh?” Beth tilted her head in a wordless question and the room spun. “Or – is that a thing on earth?”

“Is _what_ a thing?” God, why were they still talking? She just wanted to close her eyes and embrace the darkness. Maybe spend a little more time thinking about Dad and the limbs he had apparently replaced on his own.

“ _Morty_ ,” Ken said insistently when Beth let her eyelids droop. “She’s gotta be a third your father’s age.”

“Well, yeah. She’s his _granddaughter_.”

“Wait, Morty’s… Morty’s your _daughter_?” Oh _crap_ , had that really never come up? Beth blinked and then blinked again. “I thought your daughter’s name was Summer.”

“Summer’s my first daughter,” Beth mumbled, turning to press her face into her pillow, hoping Ken would get the hint and _shut up_. “Morty’s my second. I’ve told you that before.”

“ _No_ , you haven’t.”

Beth frowned, a distant echo of Dad’s voice insisting they keep Morty some _big fucking secret_ just because she was ‘rare’ filtering dimly through her memories.

And it wasn’t like Beth _loved_ thinking about Morty. All the drugs and alcohol Beth had unknowingly fed her in the womb. All the extra attention she needed because she probably had ADHD or whatever. That afternoon that Beth tried her fucking damnedest not to think about.

(The week she spent convinced she’d lost Dad all over again only to have him come back the _night_ Morty came home from her trip.)

It was _easy_ to keep Morty a secret.

“Beth,” Ken interrupted, and Beth sighed into her pillow wishing he would just go away. “Why hasn’t Morty come up before?”

“What does it matter?”

“ _Beth_. I’m not _blind_. Something clearly happened there.” Ken rolled her over with a hand on her shoulder and Beth’s stomach thought about rebelling at the sudden movement.

“ _I don’t want to talk about it_ ,” she grit out between her teeth.

“I think we should.” Beth stared determinedly past Ken trying not to see the pinched look of hurt and confusion because it would only annoy her more than she already was. “So, Morty’s your daughter.” Beth’s eyes shifted the six inches over to meet his gaze while she glared at him flatly, trying to give him the iciest, most Dad-inspired stare she could muster. “So she’s _Rick’s_ granddaughter?”

“That’s how genealogy works, Ken.”

“…Cause on earth, that’s not _kosher_ right?”

“What’s not kosher?”

“Inbreeding?”

Beth groaned, annoyed by the sudden shift in conversation. She was too drunk to keep up with Ken’s bizarre train of thought. “ _What the fuck are you getting at_?”

“They’re – Beth, they’re _close_.” His four eyes were honed in on her like he was expected her to freak out and _yeah_ – Beth didn’t love being reminded constantly that the father she’d always told herself was cold to everyone had finally opened up to someone and it wasn’t with _her._

“ _Yeah_ ,” she grit out, and with Ken, she didn’t have to disguise the bitterness in her tone.

“… _Physically_ …”

“Morty is _needy_.” Her whole life; as a baby, as a toddler, as a child. She always wanted to be held when she cried or picked up and played with or hugged when she got home from school. Beth had never big into _cuddling_ so she’d let Jerry take over the task – and look what fucking happened there.

“Seemed to me like _Rick_ was the needy one.”

Beth snorted into her pillow. “ _Dad_? Ha – yeah right.”

Ken finally, _thankfully_ , shut up for a minute and Beth had _almost_ drifted into oblivion when she felt him shift again at her side.

His voice was quieter, _gentler_ when he spoke again. “So they live together still?”

Beth groaned. “Yeah, Ken, you already went over this with them.”

“How old was she when you moved to Hyperion?”

“Jeezus, I don’t know. Fifteen? Sixteen? Somewhere around there.” Beth tried to remember, tried to picture the last time she had stood in that house on earth, Morty drifting through the empty rooms like a pale little ghost and making Beth feel unnecessarily guilty for doing what was best for herself. “She was still in high school.”

Honestly, in that sense, Dad’s return from the dead had been a god-send. Beth had never been good at taking care of her kids and Morty was… a lot to handle.

(Special needs, probably; they’d made an appointment with a doctor once but Jerry had forgotten to drive her to it and Beth had never called to reschedule because she was busy enough with her own life and pissed her worthless husband left her to deal with everything and maybe it was better for everyone if doctors didn’t poke around at Morty to figure her out. Too many eyes would turn to Beth and all the bad decisions she’d made while Morty was still inside her.)

Beth had struggled with Summer and she was as average as one could get. So when Dad made it easy, when he said ‘ _I can handle Morty_ ,’ freeing up Beth so she could go off into the universe and study to be a doctor, it was like the first gasp of air after drowning.

Did she vaguely resent that he took more care with her daughter than he had with his own? Yes. But she was also grateful that someone else, for what felt like the first time in her life, was willing to take some of the weight off her shoulders and carry it themselves.

“On Earth is it… normal… to leave your offspring behind?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Beth answered, snark making her words sharp. “My dad left me when I was even younger. Parents are people too. With ambitions and free will and everything – just because you _make a kid_ doesn’t mean they have to be the center of your life.”

“So Morty stayed with her father?”

Beth opened her eyes just to roll them at the ceiling. “ _My_ father, Ken, try to keep up.”

“But what about – you’ve never really talked about your ex-husband. Is he… still in the picture?”

“Nope.” Beth had those blue men chuck every picture with him in it into the portal to the garbage dimension when she’d moved out of the house. The closest thing she could get to erasing him from existence.

The room filled with a weighty silence that Beth very much resented.

“You don’t – you don’t know where he is?” _Now_ Beth recognized the tone; softly prodding but gently neutral. He used it on his patients all the time and it made her fucking _crazy_ when he tried to pull the same tired-ass tricks on her so she kept her mouth closed tight.

“That’s…” Her eyes darted down to his face. She _dared_ him to tread on the thin ice keeping memories of _Jerry_ at bay but it seemed like he picked up on her withering patience because he switched tracks again. “But your father left you with your mother, right? When Rick left, you still had your mom…”

“Yeah and she wound up _dying_ so what’s the big deal here, Ken?”

“You left your youngest daughter _alone_ with your father while she was still an adolescent?” There it was. The judgement. People always got so _uppity_ when a woman left her children. Fucking double standards.

“People do it all the time on earth.” Not _technically_ true but it wasn’t a fucking crime either. Why was Ken being so touchy about it?

Ken was frowning, his gaze unfocused on the pillow to the left of Beth’s ear. “Does he always drink as much as he did tonight? Does he always _touch_ her that much?”

“She’s _fine_ if that’s what you’re asking,” Beth insisted, rankling from Ken’s scrutinous tone. People had so many expectations about _motherhood_ but no one ever blinked a fucking eye if a _man_ left his wife and family. Sexist; that’s what it was. Just a load of sexist bullshit. “Dad can handle one kid.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about.”

That was so far from what Beth had been expecting that she tilted her head to focus her bleary eyes on Ken. He had his thumb nail tucked between his teeth the way he usually only did when he was looking at his bank account. A fissure of anxiety raced up Beth’s spine. 

“What are you getting at, Ken?”

His brow lowered over his four eyes, all of which were determinedly avoiding meeting her heated glare.

“Beth, I’m starting to worry that –” He made an abortive noise and started over. “Remember all the training we went through; the signifiers we’re supposed to look for when detecting…” he cringed “…abuse…”

A cold furious flame ignited in Beth’s chest. How _dare_ he accuse her father – he didn’t even _know_ the man, didn’t know what he’d _done_ for Beth – what he’d done for _Morty_.

Her voice was low and flat and dangerous when she asked, “What – you think Dad’s _hitting_ Morty?”

“No…” Ken answered slowly, the long drag of silence ratcheting up her fury. “I think he’s…” Beth narrowed her eyes. “You know what, nevermind.”

“ _No_ , you started this, Ken. You think he’s _what_?”

“I think he might be… _sexually_ abusing her…”

There were five seconds where the room was deadly silent except for two sets of heavy breathing before Beth erupted into uncontrollable laughter.

That was absurd! Comical. _Impossible_.

Her dad was a _genius_ , he attracted people like a magnet, he could seduce anything with just a glance. The idea that he’d be even remotely interested in _Morty_ , out of all the people in the _multiverse_ , was so funny Beth rolled over and grabbed her cell phone, thinking she had to text Dad so he could be in on the joke too.

And Ken, stupid, useless Ken, could only see what he _wanted_ to see. Of course he’d see a man like Rick – a man who was all the things he could _never_ be – and try to pry him apart for flaws, flat out _inventing_ one when he couldn’t find something juicy enough to sink his teeth into.

“You’re _way_ off the mark,” she told him, trying to stifle her laughter when her stomach protested all the jostling.

She started typing up a message, the words ‘ _You’re not going to believe this…_ ’ appearing in the text chain with Dad before she stopped and reconsidered.

There was a decent chance Dad would find Ken’s assumption less entertaining that Beth did; a chance he’d use it as an excuse to make Ken disappear like he did Jerry. And while Beth was beginning to question whether she wanted to continue dating Ken if he actually was as much of a delusional idiot as he was making himself out to be, she didn’t necessarily want him _gone_.

He was a decent physical therapist at the very least.

“ _Beth_ ,” Ken started, placatingly. He was trying to look stern, Beth could tell from the frown lines and the furrowed brow, but Beth had never found him _more_ ridiculous than in that moment and she’d seen him slip on his own fallen scoop of ice cream and stumble headfirst off a pier. “I don’t know…”

“But _I do._ My dad isn’t some - some _pervert._ Well, okay, he might be a pervert, but not like that.” Beth _really_ didn’t like the wary look Ken shot her and she scooted up to an elbow to properly glare him down. “Never _once_ has he done anything even remotely inappropriate to me and he had _a million opportunities_ when I was a child. He’s not a perfect guy – not even close – but he’s not… and with _Morty_?” She fought off another bubble of laughter, her stomach vehemently protesting the jostling, but it still snuck out as a stilted giggle. “ _No way_.”

Ken was looking at her with something close to _pity_ and it sucked the good humor right out of Beth’s throat like a vacuum.

“There’s stuff you don’t know about,” she bit out, refusing to share but unwilling to let someone as insignificant as _Ken_ think Dad was a – a fucking _sex offender._ “There’s a _reason_ Dad’s so overprotective with her, okay. And a reason she’s so clingy. So just _leave it alone_.”

“Does it have to do with your missing ex-husband? Does _Rick_ have something to do with that too?”

Beth felt a layer of frost settle over her like a shroud. Ken didn’t know what he was getting into.

“Beth, I care about you a lot. You know that, right?” She bared her teeth and glared. “And I’ve – I’ve always suspected that you’ve experienced… painful… things in your past,” he reached for her hand but she tugged it away with a hard yank. He continued on valiantly but Beth felt a spike of victory at his micro-wince. “But I think you’re doing yourself a disservice by choosing to ignore the past when it’s clearly still affecting you. You’ve got this – this massive _blindspot_ when it comes to your dad –”

“What’s got you so fixated on Morty anyways, Ken?” Beth demanded, her voice going scratchy. There was an unopened bottle of water on the nightstand but she didn’t want to break away from her staring contest with Ken because his four eyes had just popped wide open. “Why are you worrying so much about _my daughter_?”

“I’m not _fixated_ , Beth, just…”

“Just _what_? Projecting? I heard the way you were _flirting_ with her, Ken. Complimenting her. _Asking her out_. Jeezus, I was in the _next fucking room_.”

“I was trying to be _friendly_!” he cried, flinching back when Beth sat up. And it was his twisted, anxious face that really cinched her suspicions. Fuck, how had she made the same mistake _again_?

“So it’s fine for you to ogle my daughter right next to me but my Dad can’t hug his own grandkid without getting wild accusations thrown his way?”

“Beth, I _wasn’t_ –”

“You don’t know anything about _me_ or _my family_ or _my fucking life_ , Ken.”

“ _I know_!” Ken practically shrieked, holding his hands up in frustration. “Because _you_ won’t tell me anything, Beth!” He reached across the space between them and tried to interlace their fingers but Beth scooted away, closer to the center of the bed and away from Ken’s grasping hands. He looked stricken for a moment and then he took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling, eyes closed as he composed himself. “Please, Beth, please _explain_ it to me. I _want_ to know about you and your family and your life. _I’ll listen_.”

Beth stomach gave a lurch and her mouth filled with saliva. She was going to puke tonight, she could feel it coming, her insides rebelling against all the wine and the chili and the _bullshit_. 

“I’m tired, Ken,” Beth said flatly, severing that tiny string of affection she had felt for the man in front of her with an easy snip.

Ken blinked owlishly behind his glasses and frowned. She watched him mull something over, his eyes darting around her features before his pinched brow unfurrowed. “Okay, Beth, that’s okay,” he said softly, talking to her like she was fucking child. “Let’s go to sleep. But I think we should talk about this again in the morning.”

“No,” she snapped, her voice hard and cold. “I’m tired of _us_.”

Ken jerked like she had slapped him across the face and she weighed the merits of sitting up and trying it out in actuality, for comparisons sake, that childish urge to _lash out_ pushing against her adult logic.

“I thought you said there was no ‘ _us_ ’,” he breathed.

“Then I’m tired of whatever we are.”

“Is it because of what I said about your dad?”

“No, Ken, jeezus.” And it wasn’t. His baseless accusations against Dad were just the last straw.

“It is,” Ken breathed, starting to get worked up.

“It’s not.” Ken was too much like Jerry. How had she never seen that before? Here she was trying to move on with her life but she kept falling into the same damn pitfalls. “I want my spare key back.”

“Can’t we talk about this?”

Beth rolled over even though the contents of her stomach were itching to make a reappearance, turning her back to Ken.

“Leave it on the nightstand,” she bit back, settling into the bed.

“Beth, _please_ ,” he begged and Beth _hated_ men who begged.

“I’ve got an early shift tomorrow so I’m going to bed.”

“You can’t just ignore me,” Ken insisted but he sounded uncertain. And Beth had a lifetime of experience ignoring her mistakes. If Ken wanted to stick around and find out the hard way how frosty an ice queen Beth could be, he was more than fucking welcome.

“I’ll see you around the hospital, Ken.”

His hand landed on her hip like he was thinking about turning her over physically, but he didn’t resist her when she shoved him off.

After a _pathetically_ long time where Beth pointedly ignored a series of over-loud sniffs, his weight finally lifted from the edge of the bed. He rummaged in his pockets for another eternity, his keys clanging _forever_ until finally she heard the sound of something small and metal being placed on the wood of her bedside table.

It was another few minute of sniffling before he finally walked out of the room and down the stairs.

Stubbornness alone kept her locked in the bed until she heard her front door close and then she rolled over in a rush, puking up the wine and the chili and the cornbread in a series of painful, heaving gags. Dimly she appreciated that at least her aim for the trash bin was true and she hadn’t stained her white bed sheets with the red, sludgy remains of dinner.

When she finally reached a place where she could pull her head away from the garbage, she staggered on shaky legs to the bathroom, squinting unhappily at the brighter light when she flicked it on.

She poured her vomit into the toilet, splashing the toilet seat with red bile and swearing quietly to herself. She crammed the garbage under the bathtub faucet and swirled water inside, watching her wasted meal rinse off the side before dumping the dirty water into the toilet too.

She flushed the mess away and lowered herself trembling to lean against the tub. The tub her dad had just fixed for her. The tub that no longer bore the crack that had been driving her crazy for _months_ and that her dad had seamlessly erased in minutes.

She ran her fingers over the porcelain but she couldn’t even feel where the scar had been sealed over.

And wasn’t that just the perfect little metaphor for their relationship? She was _whole_ now that Dad was back in her life. He’d swept up to her doorstep and filled all the cracks. She was a _doctor_ now. She lived _on another planet_. He helped her get into school and find an apartment and he took care of her fucking kid so she could _finally_ live the life she deserved.

Ken was off the mark by a million miles. Dad wouldn’t do something like that to Morty. Not after…

Her stomach turned over again and she crawled to the toilet to puke up more red sludge, her eyes watering.

_Jerry_ had made the same accusations.

While Beth wracked her brain for where Morty might have come across a fucking _roofie_ , Jerry had cornered Beth in the kitchen and frowned at her in that petulant, childish way that she hated on a good day and _loathed_ when she was starting to wonder if she hadn’t been sharing her home with a monster.

“Rick’s _doing_ something, Beth,” he insisted, that needling, obnoxious tone drilled so deep into her bones she could remember the sound of it perfectly even _years_ later, face down in her own toilet.

“Doing _what_ , Jerry?”

“I don’t know. Something!” When Beth stared at him flatly, clearly unimpressed, he elaborated. “He keeps her out late and sneaks into her room at all hours and did you know – I caught him in the bathroom with her the other day!”

Beth glared at Jerry unimpressed. “She’s a teenage girl, Jerry. Her and Summer spend half their time in front of the mirror.” Things used to be simple. Sure, she hated her husband and didn’t love her job and her kids were always fucking something up but a few days ago, she’d been blissfully unaware of how much worse things could get. “And Dad doesn’t ‘ _sneak_ ’ anywhere, that’s just absurd.”

She didn’t want to deal with this. Why was she the one who _always_ had to clean up everyone’s mess? Why couldn’t she just drink herself into forgetfulness until everything resolved itself? Why couldn’t someone else take some fucking responsibility?

With hands she refused to believe were shaking, she poured coffee into her thermos and slung her purse over her shoulder.

“And what are you doing following her around like a creep, huh Jerry?” she demanded, hoping that if she hinted that she was onto him, he might cut out _whatever_ the fuck it was he was doing before things got too complicated.

“I’m trying to protect my little girl,” he argued vehemently and there was something about the way he said the words ‘ _my little girl_ ’ that made a shiver race down Beth’s spine.

“I’m not talking about this anymore, Jerry.” She wasn’t going to _think_ about it either. If she could just have _one_ _day_ where everyone acted normal for fucking _once,_ she’d sit down and figure it all out.

But she _didn’t_ get a single day. That very night she wound up staring down a stack of photos, each one more horrifying than the next.

She had tried her hardest not to commit any of the photographs to memory instead letting her intoxicated mind take note of them in a general, emotionless blur. Still one stood out through time, the one that slipped out of her purse on her drive to work that fateful day and landed face up to taunt her from the passenger seat.

A snapshot of Morty fast asleep in bed, her face lax and restful. Her shirt had ridden up to show her stomach, hair fanned over her pillow.

In a different context, the photo would be painfully innocent. Sleeping, Morty was cute and relaxed and maybe a little goofy. She was late to develop, still riding that line between kid and teenager, and her slightly parted lips and the loose fist next to her cheek would be _sweet_ if Beth weren’t looking at them through the eyes of a predator.

She quickly shoved it back into her purse to join the rest of them and tried her hardest to scrub the image from her brain.

_It didn’t make sense._ Jerry was a pathetic worm but she’d lived with the guy for _nineteen years._ She’d know, right? She’d have noticed _something_. How much could _Jerry_ feasibly hide from _her_?

He wasn’t a creep with the neighborhood kids. He didn’t ogle Summer’s friends when they slept over. For fucks sake, he flinched away from groups of teenagers when they passed him in the mall! He never made inappropriate comments about underage celebrities or searched for ‘ _barely eighteen_ ’ porn. This thing with Morty – if there _was_ a thing with Morty – had come from _nowhere._

And why would he be drawing attention to Morty _at all_ if he was trying to… prey on her or whatever? He was stupid but he wasn’t _that_ stupid.

On the other hand he’d been _weirder_ lately. Getting fired from his job was just the start of a downward spiral. It had been a long time since they had sex with anything close to regularity, mostly because Jerry was having a harder and harder time maintaining an erection. Beth’s obvious frustration and then immediate dismissal probably wasn’t helping things either but she wasn’t known for being patient.

They used to have sex at least twice a week, mostly just for the chemical release and to keep things… streamlined. The last few times they’d made an attempt, Jerry had tried to convince Beth to lay still and quiet, but that was disconcerting enough to put her off the act entirely.

And at least once she woke up feeling wet with lube between her legs when she was fairly sure she remembered going up to bed alone to drunkenly pass out.

So that was a thing.

And it wasn’t like Morty would roofie _herself_. Well, probably. Who the fuck knew what that girl was thinking, if she ever thought at all.

Beth stormed into her office and spent the morning nursing a hangover while she turned over thought after thought after thought until Dad and Summer barged in through a portal and her life took a hard left turn into the unknown.

Beth didn’t often feel ashamed of herself for her less-than-stellar parenting skills. She knew what she was and she knew what society _expected_ her to be and she didn’t much care that those two things didn’t line up.

But when she’d walked into her bedroom that afternoon to find her husband raping her limp and unconscious youngest daughter, even she was disgusted with herself when the first thought that popped up in her head was ‘ _why is it_ always _Morty?_ ’

Dad obviously favored her, Summer was starting to take her side more often than not, and Jerry seemed to have _no_ problem holding onto his hard-on with her small body half lifted in his arms.

Was it because Morty was so innately _pathetic_ that everyone flocked to her rescue or abuse? Was it because she couldn’t take care of herself? Was that it? Was Beth _too_ competent? Was that why she was always the one who had to take care of _everything_?

After that, Beth let Dad do what he wanted with Jerry mostly because she saw the look in his eye – the ‘ _let me do what I want or I’ll leave_ ’ look that was still burned into her memory from all the fights between her parents in her youth. And if it meant Beth didn’t have to hold herself responsible or talk to the police or explain to them that _yes_ , she had seen some _very incriminating pictures_ but she wanted to be extra-triple-sure before she turned in her rapist, dip-shit husband – well, that worked out best for her too.

Spitting out the acidic saliva pooled in her mouth and blowing her nose on a handful of toilet paper, Beth realized her thumb was absently tracing the thick scar on her thigh from her childhood mishap with the switchblade.

It was long and jagged, puckered in places from the thick line of skin stretching as she grew. Hyperion had the technology to erase it entirely and she’d given it some thought. It was ugly and she hated it so the option always hovered in the back of her mind but healing it somehow felt wrong.

Beth sighed, raised herself to her unsteady legs, and rinsed her mouth out in the sink. She glanced at herself in the mirror, briefly surprised by her shorter hair, taking in the stark paleness of her face and her shaking hands.

She was painfully glad there was no part of the person in the mirror that looked like her youngest daughter but the hazel eyes that held hers were all her mother, somehow still chastising her from beyond the grave.

With a hard mental shake, Beth turned away. So what if she wasn’t _a good person_? Dad wasn’t either – maybe _no one_ was. Maybe wasting your life trying to be _better_ was the stupidest thing you could do with what little time you had alive.

“There’s no such thing as _good_ and _bad_ , sweetie,” Dad hummed from a long ingrained memory, his voice deep and soft where it reverberated through her back and warmed her up from the inside.

Beth was sitting on her father’s knee, tiny, delicate metal parts spread out across the kitchen table, a soldering gun making the whole room smell like hot steel and Dad. Up close, she watched his long fingers work, striping wires and twisting them together, melting them to a complex motherboard that was nearly the size of Beth’s torso.

“Morality’s a lie stupid people cling to in the hope of finding _something_ before their inevitable, meaningless deaths.”

“But mom says –” Beth started only to be cut off.

“Mom’s just another victim of society. She’s too wrapped up in what people _want_ her to be.” Dad took another long sip from his bottle and the glass clanked against the wood when he set it back down. “No- _ooough-_ t like us, Beth. Me and you, we’re _smart_ , and that’s more important than being _good_.”

Beth _was_ smart. She was the first intergalactic doctor from the Milky Way. She saved three lives over the course of her ten hour shift and countless more – hundreds, maybe _thousands_ since she had started working at Hyperion.

That had to cancel out some of what happened to Morty, right?

And there was _no way_ Dad was… doing _that_ to Morty too. Sure, the two of them had a weird relationship but Dad didn’t do anything the normal way. If Beth were a different kind of mother, she might be a little concerned that her daughter wasn’t dating like other young people did, but considering the way Morty flinched from Ken’s touch, there was probably something deep-seated that had stuck around from the whole _Jerry_ thing. If isolating herself was how Morty coped, who was Beth to judge?

If anything, Morty’s obvious trust in Dad entirely wiped the possibility of any nefarious behavior completely from her mind. Morty was an adult now. Beth could trust her to protect herself.

Dad was clearly softening in his old age but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. He visited more often than ever before and texted or called when he was too busy to stop by. Beth and him had a _good_ relationship. Maybe even better than when he’d been living together on earth because she didn’t have to be worried about him accidentally blowing her house up.

And if being together worked for Dad and Morty, then Beth could (begrudgingly) accept that they clearly had a system that worked for them. She wasn’t stupid, she knew she was lucky to be on the outskirts of her father’s orbit. And if Morty turned all that clinginess to _Beth_ , she’d be ripping her fucking hair out. So more power to Dad for putting up with it.

With a heavy sigh, Beth wiped off the edge of the toilet seat and flushed away her mess. What a waste of wine. Luckily, the room was still spinning and blackness was creeping in around the edges of her vision so she had a good chance of passing out immediately despite the day’s assorted bullshit.

If she was _really_ lucky, she’d wake up tomorrow with only dim memories of her breakup with Ken. Even as she gingerly crawled into the middle of the bed, the garbage can slotting back into its place on the ground, she was having a hard time remembering why he came over in the first place. If she didn’t bend her mind to remembering, it might be lost forever in a brownout and that was _exactly_ what Beth was hoping for.

When she laid her head down and closed her eyes, the relief she felt was immediate and almost overwhelming, blackness stretching out to swallow her whole.

Behind her closed eyelids, she was transported, momentarily, to that night when Dad was drunk and Beth was getting there and she was holding her stomach from laughing so hard. Dad needed Morty because she was dumb – _so monumentally dumb_ – that she could shield his intelligence from his enemies.

_Beth_ could never to do that, and wasn’t that a strange sort of relief.

“But doesn’t Morty drive you _crazy_?” Beth asked, her chuckles dying down, the question popping out of her unbidden.

Dad’s eyes were on his bottle of whiskey as he swirled the last few inches into a whirlpool. He scoffed, the sound self-deprecating but not entirely devoid of humor. “You have _no_ idea.”

His gaze flashed up to Beth and the gleam in his eyes was strangely warm, his smile _unimaginably soft_. She’d known this man for _years_ – she’d seen him screaming obscenities red-faced at the cops and sobbing uncontrollably with a gun pressed to his temple and shame-faced with regret standing on her doorstep - and never once had she seen him make _that_ face.

Back then it was the first time. Since then, she’d seen rare glimpses of it – with Morty, _always_ with Morty - but it never failed to drop the bottom out of Beth’s stomach.

“But she’s a good kid, Beth,” he continued, unaware of the resentfulness pulling Beth down into a dark pit in her mind. “Probably _too good_ for a crazy old bastard like me but…” He tilted his bottle up to his lips and took a long sip. “…thank _fuck_ she hasn’t figured that out yet.”

Beth shifted under the covers, blocking out the warm glow of her bedside lamp by pressing her face deeper into her pillows.

The last thing she saw before she slipped off into sleep was something half made up and half memory: her Dad, younger and less lined, kneeling down to greet her, his face lighting up in that unimaginably soft smile – just for her, _just for Beth_ \- as he pulled her into his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> So I know this is a bit of a shift from U and Tau - there's a conspicuous lack of smut, for one, and Beth is... not everyone's favorite - but I plan on using these one-shots to explore other parts of the U-694verse and what Rick and Morty's relationship appears to be from the outside looking in. 
> 
> But honestly, I'm still shook by trying to figure out a rating and not immediately clicking _Explicit_ like the trash goblin I am. So some will be porny but others might not be - keep an eye on the rating if you're only in it for the smut.
> 
> And Happy Birthday DamagedCoda!!! Your support and friendship fuels this story!


End file.
